Back9 Exclusive: John Daly on Cocktails, Country Hits and Charisma

Arnold Palmer has his ubiquitous namesake drink, Jack has his Golden Bear Lemonade, and now John Daly has joined the giants of the sport in the beverage game. While touring South Carolina, the lion lets loose on his eponymous cocktail, country music, and the player who can next transcend golf.

John, for years people used to make their own John Daly cocktail by spiking an Arnold Palmer with vodka, was that what inspired you to get into the flavored vodka business?

I’ve been drinking John Daly’s since I was 22 or 23 years old in California. We used to drink it all the time. When we started this company three years ago, we counted menus and my name was already on 14000 so we thought wait a minute, if you’re going to put my name on it I thought at least you should be getting the good stuff.

Were you pissed off that everybody was using it and you weren’t getting credit for it?

Bartenders can make it differently. We wanted people to get the right drink. Ours is all natural juices, and it’s a very high-grade vodka. What we experienced is the better the juice, the better the vodka, the better the drink.

Since you don’t drink a lot anymore how do you know your vodka tastes good?

Oh, I’ve tried it. My favorite is the raspberry. We also have peach and original lemonade.

Your country rock anthem “Hit It Hard” has started getting heavy radio play on SiriusXM radio recently, any idea how that happened since the album came out three years back?

No, I don’t. I had met with some guys at the PGA Championship and one of the guys said that somebody at Sirius had heard the album and he said I’ll play it for him again if you got one. I gave him one and Stormy listened to it and said he loved the song Hit it Hard. It’s been playing 30, 40 times a day since then for the last two or three weeks. It’s a little different, but I am different.

My thought is that I’m not very good. There are so many players and musicians who are never going to get airplay so it’s all about marketing. I made my album because my fans wanted me to do another one. This is awesome that the song is being played. I don’t know I’d have to go get a band and practice for about two years.

Golf is currently short on big personalities and charismatic brands like yours that transcend the game. Of the current crop of young guns who do you think has the potential to become a celebrity outside of the game?

I don’t know, it seems like everybody is a corporation now. I think Rickie Fowler sells PUMA like I sell Loudmouth pants but to be honest that’s it. I mean Tiger/Rory selling Nike and Mickelson selling a bit of Callaway. I think Mickelson’s one of the greatest players ever but its hard to market a lefthander, but he’s doing great. It’s going to be hard because it’s all about the money now.

There’s a lot of doom and gloom these days about the future of golf with rounds played down year-over-year, Dicks Sporting goods canning their PGA pros and the Economist heralding cycling as the new golf. Do you think the gloom is overdone?

Right now golf is very cheap to play compared to where it was back in the 1980s and 1990s so the clubs have done great on memberships and there are a lot more public golf courses so I don’t know. Everything is about the economy and our economy sucks right now. That’s the bottom line

If someone wanted to dress up as John Daly for Halloween, other than the Loudmouth pants and the bleached hair what else is key to getting the look down?